<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110141152/636d02289c7e80680e0a3666jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1360" height="680"/><figcaption>Photo via PROJECT SYNDICATE</figcaption></figure>This week marks the 20th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. On that day, 19 terrorists took control of four civilian aircraft, flew two into the towers of New York’s World Trade Center, struck the Pentagon with a third, and crashed the fourth in a Pennsylvania field after passengers physically prevented the terrorists from reaching their target, often thought to be the White House or another US government building in Washington, DC.All the hijackers were from the Middle East, 15 from Saudi Arabia alone. All were trained in Afghanistan, and four at US flight schools, as part of an operation planned, organised, and carried out by al-Qaeda (the “base”), the terrorist group headed by Osama bin Laden. By the day’s end, 2,977 innocent men, women, and children had been killed, and more than 6,000 injured. Most were American, although citizens of more than a hundred other countries also lost their lives as well.Many at the time feared that 9/11 had ushered in an era defined by global terrorism. And, to be sure, other al-Qaeda attacks followed, including the train bombings in Madrid in March 2004 and the attack on London’s transit system in July 2005. Moreover, terrorists claiming allegiance to the Islamic State (ISIS) killed 32 people at Brussels Airport in March 2016, and staged a series of smaller attacks (often using vehicles to mow down pedestrians). But neither the US nor any of its allies has experienced another attack on the scale of 9/11 – or one even close to it. It is therefore necessary to ask: Beyond the immediate costs, what difference did 9/11 make? How did history change, if at all, as a result?Terrorism, unpluggedThere are many explanations for why terrorists have not succeeded in executing additional major attacks. With the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/afghans-in-nepal-await-resettlement/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">US invasion of Afghanistan</a>, al-Qaeda lost its sanctuary. Almost every government around the world has introduced new screening procedures that make it more difficult for would-be terrorists to gain access to airports and airplanes. Countries have dramatically increased their intelligence, police, and military capabilities devoted to minimising risks and countering threats. Countries have also increased their cooperation with one another; counterterrorism is a rare domain where governments that often disagree are willing and able to work together to a considerable degree.There is also now broad agreement on what constitutes terrorism – the use of armed force by individuals and groups against civilians for political purposes – and a degree of support for the principle that governments should not distinguish between terrorists and those who give them sanctuary and support. Mostly gone are the days when individuals and groups who killed on behalf of their cause were romanticised as freedom fighters.This is not to say that terrorism has not continued to claim tens of thousands of lives each and every year, which it most surely has. But almost all the attacks have taken place in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia as part of ongoing conflicts (mostly in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Yemen) as opposed to an isolated 9/11-style attack against one of the major powers. Terrorism is increasingly localised and decentralised. It is also resilient: capturing or killing the head of a terrorist organisation does not necessarily spell its end. Al-Qaeda, for example, survived the killing of bin Laden by US special operations forces in Pakistan nearly a decade after the 9/11 attack.It thus comes as no surprise that terrorism continues, with no end in sight. Nor can the possibility of a new 9/11 be ruled out, even though the US government has recently stated that the “most urgent terrorism threat” the country faces is domestic. As the Provisional Irish Republican Army put it after its failed effort to assassinate British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1984, “Today we were unlucky, but remember we only have to be lucky once. You will have to be lucky always.” The danger is that the day will come when terrorists gain access to nuclear material or figure out how to manufacture and deliver a biological or chemical weapon, in which case terrorism could come to define the age. For now, though, it has not.America, unleashedNonetheless, 9/11 marked a historical turning point, with a profound impact on US foreign policy in the two decades since. Although the attacks did not usher in an era of global terrorism, they did usher in the so-called Global War on Terrorism, which profoundly affected what the US did in the world, how the world came to regard the US, and how many Americans came to see their country’s foreign policy.The saga begins in Afghanistan. Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, the US gave the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/nepal-and-the-talibans-second-coming/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Taliban</a>, then in control of Afghanistan’s government, a choice: either hand over the al-Qaeda leaders who were living in their country and responsible for planning the 9/11 attack, or put their rule at risk. When the Taliban refused to hand over the al-Qaeda leaders, US intelligence and military personnel collaborated with a loose confederation of Afghan tribes known as the Northern Alliance in overthrowing the Taliban. The US helped assemble a successor government that took control of most of the country.That control, though, was never complete or unchallenged. Many individuals loyal to the Taliban and al-Qaeda escaped to neighbouring Pakistan, where they gradually rebuilt their strength and resumed military operations against the government that had replaced them. The US for its part did not do enough to build an Afghan military, reduce corruption, or deny the Taliban a sanctuary in Pakistan. Instead, it increased its own presence and military operations in Afghanistan, essentially becoming a partner of the government in its civil war.At its peak, the US effort in Afghanistan involved more than 100,000 of its soldiers. Over two decades, US operations cost more than $2 trillion, and more than 2,300 Americans, as well as tens of thousands of Afghans, lost their lives. The effort was at once <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/afghanistan-abandoned/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">both too much and not enough</a>. While the US presence robbed the Afghan government of much of its legitimacy and generated opposition in the US, the Taliban proved to have more staying power than the US, which by 2020 had lost its will to continue a fight that promised only an open-ended stalemate.The Global War on Terrorism also led the US to launch a war in Iraq. It is an open question whether President George W. Bush would have initiated the war had it not been for 9/11. Certainly, the attacks increased his inclination to signal to the world that the US was not, as President Richard Nixon put it during the Vietnam War, a “pitiful helpless giant.” It made some in the administration (particularly Vice President Dick Cheney) unwilling to take the risk that terrorists might gain control of weapons of mass destruction, which Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was widely thought (incorrectly, it turned out) to possess. Still others wanted to spread democracy to Iraq, and from there to the entire Middle East, on the assumption that this was not just possible, but also that it would make the region far less likely to produce terrorists and support terrorism.The war in Iraq, launched in March 2003, did not go as intended or predicted by the Bush administration and the many in Congress (including then-Senator Joe Biden) and around the country who supported it. The US was unprepared for much of what was to come. Initial military victories ousted the government but soon gave way to widespread violent turmoil and civil war. Decisions to disband the Iraqi military and exclude from government jobs many of the Iraqis who had been associated with the previous regime exacerbated an already chaotic situation. More fundamentally, Iraq, like Afghanistan, demonstrated the limits of what military force could accomplish at a reasonable cost and in a reasonable timespan.In the end, the US was forced to increase its military presence to nearly 170,000 troops to sustain the embattled successor government in Baghdad. A degree of stability was achieved, but at an enormous cost. The US spent at least as much there as in Afghanistan, but at a much higher human cost: more than 4,000 American soldiers killed, many times that number wounded, and soaring suicide rates among US troops (both in Iraq and Afghanistan). And this total excludes private contractors and Iraqi casualties, for which estimates vary widely but which certainly total several hundred thousand.The war in Iraq also weakened the US in other ways. There was never any evidence that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks, and America’s reputation suffered further when its stated rationale for launching a war without UN support – to eliminate Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction – turned out to have no basis in reality. Images of US soldiers mistreating Iraqi prisoners further tarnished the country’s reputation. Moreover, an Iraq at war with itself meant that Iran emerged as the most powerful country in the region (or one of two if Israel is included). Since the war, Iran has increased its sway over Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Lebanon.Iraq and Afghanistan also proved to be major strategic distractions. While the US was heavily involved in the Middle East and South Asia, regions that lacked any great-power presence or economic dynamism, the geopolitical balance moved against the US in both Europe and East Asia thanks to the emergence of a more aggressive Russia and a more capable and assertive China. The Global War on Terrorism did not and could not provide a compass for how US foreign policy should approach renewed great-power rivalry.The world, unmooredThe wars fought in the wake of 9/11 also had significant domestic consequences for the US. They shook the confidence of a country that had emerged from the Cold War with a historically unprecedented preponderance of power and shattered the national unity that came to the surface in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. Moreover, their costs and failures stimulated opposition to a continuing, large US global role, giving rise to a new tendency toward isolationism. Likewise, the push for war, together with the 2007-09 global financial crisis and its economic fallout, powerfully undermined Americans’ faith in elites, stimulating the rise of populist sentiment that, among other things, helped pave the way for the <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/nation/a-trump-world-us-nepal,3359" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">presidency of Donald Trump</a>. Today’s US is <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/ten-hours-that-shook-america/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">more divided than ever</a> at home and increasingly disinclined to carry out the sort of active foreign policy that has been its hallmark since World War II’s end, and which has, on balance, greatly benefited Americans and many others.In hindsight, we can now see that 9/11 was a harbinger of what was to come: less the globalisation of terrorism than the terrors of globalisation. The attacks conveyed the message that distance and borders count for little in a global age. Little stays local for long, whether terrorists born in the Middle East and trained in Afghanistan, or the effects of the global financial crisis that had its origins in American financial mismanagement. We are all living with a pandemic virus that has killed millions since emerging in central China in December 2019. The <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/nepal-is-going-up-in-smoke/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">fires</a>, <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/first-drought-then-downpour/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">droughts</a>, <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/kathmandus-flash-floods-are-4-decades-in-the-making/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">floods</a>,  storms, and heat ravaging much of the world are the consequence of climate change, itself the cumulative effect of human activity that has concentrated <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/un-climate-report-declares-planetary-emergency/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">unsustainable amounts of heat-trapping greenhouse gases </a>into the atmosphere.The era triggered by events in Afghanistan has now come full circle, marking its 20th anniversary with events in Afghanistan. Twenty years ago, the Taliban were quickly ousted from power; in recent weeks they have regained power just as quickly. It is too soon to know whether the Taliban will revert to their old ways, becoming once again enablers of terrorism, and whether terrorists everywhere will get a boost from their victory over the US and its allies. What we do know, however, is that terrorism will remain a feature of our world. It will not define the future, but it will remain a visible aspect of the globalisation that already has.By arrangement with © <a href="https://www.project-syndicate.org/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.project-syndicate.org/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1607178503443000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHSbaaYvdpDj2FQzkDgwL7xNFnkWg">Project Syndicate</a>Read Also:<a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/bring-us-home-says-nepali-in-kabul/">“Bring us home”, says Nepali in Kabul</a>, Nepali Times<a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/who-will-rescue-nepalis-from-afghanistan/">Who will rescue Nepalis from Afghanistan?</a> Nepali TimesRichard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, previously served as Director of Policy Planning for the US State Department (2001-2003), and was President George W. Bush's special envoy to Northern Ireland and Coordinator for the Future of Afghanistan. He is the author, most recently, of The World: A Brief Introduction (Penguin Press, 2020)

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The World 9/11 Made

<figure><img width="1000" height="750" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110141132/636cfd7a9c7e80680e0a0be7jpeg.jpg" alt=""/><figcaption>Aunohita Mojumdar on right talking to farmers in a field in the village of Haibat Khel in Parwan province in 2008. Photo: ANNE FEENSTRA</figcaption></figure>Gut-wrenching images and <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/bring-us-home-says-nepali-in-kabul/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">stories</a> have flooded the media sphere over the last few days. Hundreds flocking to the airport, clinging to the undercarriage of aircraft in desperation,<a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/call-to-evacuate-afghan-journalists/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> journalists in hiding</a> or seeking visas to leave, people in streets and in camps fleeing the violence that has preceded the fall of province after province to the Taliban. The rapidity with which the Taliban have been able to take control over the entire country has surprised everyone including the Taliban themselves. However, while the speed may not have been foreseen, the collapse of the government had seemed inevitable for some time, especially after the steps taken by the US in rapid succession since the Doha deal they struck with the Taliban in 2020. Ironically called the ‘Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan’, the deal ensured the unconditional withdrawal of <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/the-rome-statute-and-the-hague/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">American troops</a>. Desperate to leave, the US administration acceded to the Taliban insistence of talks without the presence of the elected Afghan government -- thus de-legitimising the leadership that President Joe Biden is today blaming for the collapse of the government.So what of the 20 years of international support? The entire nation-building project led by the Americans, regardless of what President Joe Biden now says, was based on an American view of what a liberated Afghanistan and Afghans should look and sound like, often with little understanding of the ground reality. <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/nepal-and-the-talibans-second-coming/">Nepal and the Taliban’s second coming</a>, Kanak Mani DixitUnfortunately, American military and financial power outstripped that of other nations several times over and coupled with the belief in American Exceptionalism this ensured their overweening dominance. More nuanced approaches were run rough-shod and complex perspectives that could address the complicated realities were jettisoned in favour of the black-and-white you ‘are with us or against us’ approach. While there is much to blame on the Afghan government and the leaders, it is worth looking at how the security paradigm and the political leadership were instituted. In the initial period following the 2001 invasion, the US prevented the expansion of NATO in order to keep complete control of the security sphere, and subsequently blocked all attempts at allowing even the negotiated surrender of the Taliban leadership, thus driving them underground. Over the years, international forces killed a large number of civilians, an unacceptably high rate of ‘collateral damage’ that turned a significant portion of the Afghan population against them as well as against the Afghan government they were supporting. While ‘introducing democracy’ to Afghans, the US railroaded Afghans into accepting a governance structure that concentrated all powers in the presidency -- far more extreme than any presidential style of governance in existence -- and also forced an electoral system that kept out political parties -- the building blocks of any democratic polity.  <figure><img width="1000" height="750" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110141132/636cfd7c9c7e80680e0a0be8jpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Leaders of militias were rearmed and empowered despite the fact that some of them had a track record of extreme brutality and predation on the local population. In later years, groups directly under the control of the US --and outside the ambit of the local army and police forces -- were armed, often with little checks and control resulting in more for violence against civilians. Finally, in order to meet an artificial timetable of ‘Afghan owned’ security, an Afghan army was built in a hurry despite obvious evidence of its weaknesses: the lack of adequate command and control structures, and inadequate training. Reports of high rates of recidivism, and drug addiction in the ranks were ignored in pursuit of the goal of filling the numbers. Over the years the Taliban regrouped and began to expand its footprint, enabled in some measure, by local discontent, access to safe spaces across the Pakistan border and the ‘live and let live’ deals struck in many areas.<a style="font-size: 15px; letter-spacing: 0.01em;" href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/farewell-danish/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Farewell, Danish</a>, Navesh ChitrakarIn the past several years large parts of the country have been under the control of the Taliban or only nominally under the control of the government. In many areas, deals had been brokered for a holding pattern whereby neither side would engage in operations, thus leaving the local population the space to lead relatively peaceful lives. All of this was known to the US administration as it prepared to leave. What they had not counted on perhaps was the speed with which the government would fall. A more convenient gap would have allowed them to distance themselves from the disastrous political fallout a little better, and made their efforts to gas-light an entire country appear a little more tenable.As it is, the rapidity of events has left the emperor with no clothes, its usurpation of Afghan airspace to remove its own citizens while holding Afghan civilians at bay at gunpoint is now the last lingering image.What nextThe uncertainty that has come with the Taliban taking power is fearful, and the fears very real. But the truth is that no one yet knows what kind of governance will emerge under Taliban 2.0 Will women be allowed in the public space? Will they have to adopt diktats on a dress code that will force them back into burkha? Will independent media be allowed to function? Will the Taliban seek to replicate the image of the state that they created between 1996 and 2001 when they controlled almost the entire country? Will they, as they have stated publicly, respect the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/i-may-not-be-alive-by-the-time-i-am-evacuated/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">rights of women </a> ncluding their right to education? Already these rights are being caveated by talk of ‘within Islamic law’ which is open to wide interpretation. What will the Taliban attitude be towards the minorities, especially the Shi’a Hazara communities some of which were massacred when they were last in power? <figure><img width="480" height="640" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110141132/636cfd7f9c7e80680e0a0be9jpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>For a section of the media, ‘the terrorists have arrived’. And while the desperate images from the airport tell an important part of the story about the arrival of the Taliban in power they do not tell it in its entirety. Most Afghans did not want the return of the Taliban, but many urban, educated Afghans used to freedoms are staying on, deliberately and consciously, willing to consider and find ways and means of navigating the new realities. They are willing to unpick the issues and tackle them to try and create the space for living their lives, and all of us should be doing that too rather than treating Afghanistan and its people as a lost nation, or the situation as ‘game over’. The Americans have abandoned Afghanistan and the Afghans. It is time we in the region abandon the American approach towards Afghanistan as a nation to be lost or won, to be inducted into the empire of allies or rejected as an ‘enemy’ country.With the fall of the Afghan government and the takeover by the Taliban, much of the strategic discourse in the national media of the neighbouring countries has been an accounting of winners and losers, a zero-sum game that tallies the increasing influence of one country and the reduction of another’s. One popular narrative suggests that the return of the Taliban will lead to an Afghanistan-China-Pakistan nexus and that India has lost out.It might be more pertinent from the viewpoint of strategic policy to look not just at the convergence of interests but also at the divergences. China would like to see stability that will allow it economic engagement with Afghanistan. It has already invested heavily in the country’s mineral wealth and has been waiting to reap it. Neither China nor Russia would like to see unrest on their borders/near borders. China’s boundary with Afghanistan borders Xinjiang, and China has been critical of the way the US has withdrawn troops rather than happy about the exit of its strategic competitor. Russia has been deeply concerned about the problem of drugs flowing from Afghanistan, and even collaborated with the US in counternarcotics measures. Iran and Pakistan will both bear the brunt of the exodus of refugees from Afghanistan and while Pakistan has provided safe sanctuary to the Taliban, allowing them to grow in strength and capability from the safe havens, the Taliban in power in Afghanistan may make it more difficult to operate against their own home-grown terror networks. <figure><img width="1000" height="750" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110141132/636cfd819c7e80680e0a0beajpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure><figure><img width="1000" height="750" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110141132/636cfd849c7e80680e0a0bebjpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Until now, regional political power has been exercised at the behest of the Americans with countries it considers to be inimical kept out of the way. That template will have broken down with the American departure, and political change in Kabul. But a regional approach based on common interests, short, medium and long-term can be found only if the countries do not look for the zero-sum approach. And, what about all of us in the region? Can we leave it to our governments? ***Afghans and Afghanistan are us“We are not Americans,” the young Afghan man told me angrily, and, I thought, patronisingly. It was 2004 in Kabul and we were in the middle of a fierce debate on independence of media and women’s rights, the two issues which have come to the fore in the aftermath of the Taliban takeover of Kabul. The young man, R, was insistent that all this talk of rights was an American imposed program, alien to the culture of Afghanistan. “Nor am I American,” I answered, emphasising that my footprint was firmly in the region. My shift to a regional paradigm changed the tone of the conversation that day, and we were able to have a discussion based on substance rather than on stereotypes. I was to find this again and again as I navigated through the complex space of a country emerging from years of isolation, one, which seemed, then, to be on the brink of a more hopeful future. <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/banner/nepali-repatriation-from-kabul-starts/">Nepali repatriation from Kabul starts</a>, Nepali Times <figure><img width="1000" height="750" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110141132/636cfd879c7e80680e0a0becjpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>To me it seemed as though the complexities of the country and the opportunities, its strengths and its problems mirrored ours, different certainly in scale and acuteness but nonetheless familiar and tractable. The problems facing Afghan women had not disappeared with the removal of the Taliban. Some areas experienced much greater freedom, and some faced more problems. The most brutal interpretation of Sharia was gone, but it still took presidential diktat to save an Afghan from execution for perceived blasphemy. Over the eight years that I lived there, I also saw a growing erosion of support for women’s rights. An Afghan woman activist was denied appointment as a minister by the parliament because her work for safe houses for women was considered immoral. Women were still being incarcerated in Pul-e-Charkhi prison outside Kabul for the crime of running away from abusive homes. They were guilty since, as possessions of the family, they were considered to have committed a theft against their family by running away. Women ran radio stations and became TV anchors. In some places they were also forced to leave the radio stations they had joined as their voices on air were considered unbecoming by their families. The space which had opened up after the removal of the Taliban was full of possibilities. It was also full of struggle. It also felt familiar, the way it did in many parts of India where many women like me had many more rights than others did. It felt familiar the way it did in the villages of Haryana where I had reported from homes where Hindu women observed deep purdah as many Afghan women continued to do. In Kabul I wore the same head covering I had worn in many villages in India on my reporting trips and received some lectures from western women journalists on how I was supposed to show the way to Afghan women by discarding it. When some of the women’s rights started being eroded under the growing clout of the ultra-conservative militia leaders they had put in power, western diplomats started to talk about cultural relativity. I found myself asserting that I came from a similar culture but that the rights to life, liberty and safety were neither relative nor negotiable. The reigning narrative of the Taliban was one of oppression of religious minorities. Except that in the popular narrative it was oppression of non-Muslim minorities - the Hindus and Sikhs. What I found in Afghanistan was different. One of the first de rigueur interviews as an Indian journalist was with the leaders of the Sikh community in Kabul’s Karte Parwan area.  <figure><img width="500" height="668" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221110141132/636cfd8a9c7e80680e0a0bedjpeg.jpg" alt=""><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>The Sikh leader complained about the deterioration of security after the departure of the Taliban. They said their religious rights had not been impinged upon by the Taliban whose focus was on making Muslims observant of all the religious practices. I thought about that today when I heard the Indian government had decided to discriminate on religious grounds, and offered help only to the Hindus and Sikhs of Afghanistan. I thought about the outcry over independent media in Afghanistan today when I read about journalists in Srinagar being thrashed while reporting on the muharram procession.I knew about the outrage of the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan. When I travelled to Bamiyan valley I also saw the areas where communities of Hazaras had been massacred around the same time, with much less international comment. I had gone to live in Afghanistan in 2003. In 2002 I had marched in the streets of Delhi and organised meetings after the state-assisted massacres of Muslims in Gujarat. I would not have been working in Afghanistan had the Taliban still been there and I could see the young Afghans I worked with and met amazed at the opportunities.They would show me their ID cards from the Taliban times, long bearded and morose, laughing at how much older they had looked then – but it also felt familiar, like the struggles of much of our region against femicide and infanticide, against horrific dowry deaths and religious discrimination, against the use of state power to brutal ends. It didn’t feel like another planet the way it seemed to do to some westerners. The truth is that long before the Americans abandoned Afghanistan, we in the region, had relinquished our claims to a shared kinship based on geography, history and culture, looking at the country as a mutation of our worst fears, and one can draw a line, perhaps not straight, but jagged, from there to what we see today. But now, perhaps, it is time. It is time we in the region not leave it to our governments, and to claim Afghanistan and Afghans as one of us.Read also:<a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/who-will-rescue-nepalis-from-afghanistan/"> Who will rescue Nepalis from Afghanistan?</a>Aunohita Mojumdar is a Southasian journalist. She lived and worked in Kabul for 8 years.

Afghanistan abandoned

<img width="1500" height="1000" src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221108151124/636a67019c7e80680e0599b6jpeg.jpg" alt=""/>Jamil Jan Kochai is the O Henry Prize-winning author of the novel <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Nights-Logar-Jamil-Jan-Kochai/dp/0525559191" target="_blank" rel="noopener">99 Nights in Logar</a>, which was <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/2019-shortlist-announced-for-dsc-prize/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">shortlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature</a>. Nepali Times sat down with him at the <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/latest/nepal-and-international-literature-festival/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Nepal Literature Festival</a> in Pokhara on 15 December. Excerpts of interview:Nepali Times: An entire chapter in your English novel is in Pashto. What was your motivation?Jamil Jan Kochai: Initially, it started out as a craft issue more than anything else. I had been trying to write that chapter for a long time. The entire novel leads up to that story within the story, and it is a story that is actually based on real life events: this tragedy that occurred in my own family. It is a very sensitive, tender story and it haunted my whole childhood and my entire family. I knew it was going to be very difficult to write, but I did not anticipate that I would not be able to write it. I tried quite a few times and I would get a few sentences in, maybe a page in and it would just fall apart.Whenever I heard this story, it was always in bits and pieces and it was always in Pashto, because it was only meant for us and it was our story. That chapter ended up being directly from my father. He told the story as he remembered it. It is the story of the murder of his younger brother during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. I recorded him telling it. He was very picky about who could write the story down because he wanted it to be told in a very specific way and he wanted it written in a very specific way. We ended up finding someone who met his standards in his village in Logar.Initially there was some, not necessarily resistance, but certainly questions. My agent had questions about it, my editor had questions about it, other editors had questions about it, but when I discussed the intention of it and how I was having so much trouble telling that story, ultimately, my agent, my editor, my publisher – everyone was very supportive of it.It did take on its own sort of political ideological message. What happens to stories when they are translated? Who is the book meant for? For me, it is a story that is very precious to our family, told to me over and over again in Pashto. Finally I decided, ‘I am going to allow it to remain in this state instead of translating it and risk ruining it.’You also have all these non-English words in the novel. There is this sad thing where our entire second generation of immigrants in America that is coming up right now, we are losing touch with our language, but at the same time it still has a way of almost infecting our English and that is the way we talk. I always wanted to write in a voice that was true to the voice that belongs to my household. I think there are also certain words that are untranslatable.Could we talk a little bit about how you insert oral narratives and traditional stories in the novel?It became a central element of the novel, but just like the chapter in Pashto it initially had just been a craft issue. I had got to a point in the novel where, like 100 pages in, I had been writing a very traditional ‘boy’s adventure’ tale based on Huckleberry Finn and Rudyard Kipling’s Kim and all these novels I grew up reading. I did not know what the characters were going to do next.Up until then, I was watching the characters, seeing what choices they were going to make, seeing how they were interacting with each other, interacting with the land. Then the group split apart. Two of the characters were underneath a tree and they were stuck there and did not know how to leave because they did not know how to get back and they did not want to leave – I was like “What do I do here?”I ended up putting the novel away and going to my bookshelf and picking up a copy of The Arabian Nights, which I had purchased a long time ago, but it had been just sitting on my shelf for years and years. I opened up and I started reading it and I was just blown away by the beauty of these tales, the magic and also the radical form, almost experimental by today’s standards. I read the stories within the stories and I was looking at the way that the book was handling time and was able to play with tension and danger through the storytelling itself: it just felt so true to the way that we tell stories in our own house ... often lead into other stories, end halfway through, for whatever reason.So, I went back to that spot where I was stuck and instead of making the characters do something, I just let them tell stories and then the stories ended up leading to other events and other stories and it just completely changed the way I was writing the novel itself. Before, I was looking at action, choice, movement and event. Then I was searching out narratives – I was looking at who needs to tell the next story, who wanted to tell the next story.You have a lot of religious elements, almost underlying the novel – how intentional is it?I do not know how intentional it is. What I was trying to capture with the novel was how this boy from America in Afghanistan experienced the world. In a way, a central aspect of how he experienced the world was through Islam and specifically how it functioned in a small village in Logar province in Afghanistan, where you wake up to the sound of the adhan for prayer and then you work until the adhan for afternoon prayer and then you take a break. Time there is organised according to the Islamic prayers and then the narratives there circulate around the Quran, the hadith, and so in a way it felt very natural to the way I wanted to tell the story. It felt very natural to my own experience as a Muslim.I was conscious of the ways Islam was represented in America and how Muslims are represented in America. In particularly, this whole idea of the good Muslim versus the bad Muslim, which is a rhetoric I find really troubling where certain populations of Muslims become bomb-able and destroy-able because of how they are portrayed in the media. But then you have these good peaceful Muslims who need to be saved, need to be protected from their own people. I was very conscious of that, certainly. You even put one, or a mixture, of stories from the Quran. Was that deliberate?That took a lot of deliberation because I was actually worried about like, if my imam read that book and read that section, what he would think about it. Or if my father – he has not read the book, I have explained the book to him – but if he somehow heard that, “Oh, your son went and retold a story from the Quran.” I was a little nervous about it.Your book is semi-autobiographical – how real is the story?I would say a lot of elements are heavily autobiographical. When I was 12 years old, I went back to my parents’ home village in Logar and I had adventures with my cousins and so, certainly, it begins with my memories. People that I knew, people that I loved. What I ended up doing with the novel was that I allowed these memories to go off in their own directions and become what they wanted to become within the narrative.Budabash is a real dog. He was our guard dog in our compound in Afghanistan. He absolutely hated me, that was true, but he never did bite off the tip of my finger. He did get loose out onto the village and we had to go after him, but I did not actually take part in the chase. My cousins did and it was something I would often think about. So the first time it really started with this idea, “What if I hadn’t been afraid of going on this chase with my cousins, what would have happened?”Are there any Afghan Americans you are excited about?Aria Aber. Her poetry collection came out recently and she had a poem published in The New Yorker as well. Very talented, I want to give her a shout out.<a href="https://aaawa.net/aaawa-launches-fragmented-futures-afghanistan-100-years-later-in-glendale-ca/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://aaawa.net/aaawa-launches-fragmented-futures-afghanistan-100-years-later-in-glendale-ca/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1576928521873000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHrb58czF9kkW_UwDKZuWo3834Usw">Fragmented Futures.</a> It was set up by an Afghan American art organisation in California and they put together this incredible magazine of just Afghan artists and it was photography, paintings, poetry and fiction as well. Incredible work. I was overwhelmed by how talented they were -- it got me very emotional. I’m very excited about this next generation of writers who are coming out of these communities in the States.

Debut novelist lets Afghans speak for themselves

<h2>Families enable ex-Gurkhas to continue global private security work</h2><figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221107111152/6368e3ae9c7e80680e033397jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="1001"/><figcaption>A security worker from Pokhara before boarding his flight to Afghanistan. He is back on duty after a month of holidays and spending time with his loved ones. He will not see them for a year. all Photos: Robic Upadhyay</figcaption></figure>The martial history and reputation of <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/page/the-gurkhas-an-interactive-timeline" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Gurkhas</a> is well known in Britain and Nepal. The public is aware of their unacknowledged contributions to local communities in Nepal, the broader political views of Gurkhas, and inter-generational dynamics that motivate <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/nation/More-warlike,1023" target="_blank" rel="noopener">young men to become Gurkhas</a>.It is these very aspects of Gurkhas that make them so desirable for the global private security industry. Recently, with the British Gurkhas’ right to remain in the UK, Nepalis retired from the Indian Army have been moving from the military to private security contractors in <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/comment/rebirth/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Afghanistan</a> and elsewhere.Read also: <a href="https://www.nepalitimes.com/opinion/comment/rebirth/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Rebirth</a>, Upasana KhadkaYet, it is more than just the martial reputations that enables such a migration desirable and possible. To understand <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/nation/Gurkhas-dying-for-others,2938" target="_blank" rel="noopener">this type of migration</a>, we need to also take into account the Gurkha household. Military scholars focusing on the US, Canadian and UK militaries have shown how families are called upon to support and sustain broader military objectives.Gurkha families also take on the same necessary household work that enable broader global security deployments to take place. These include the necessary life sustaining work of cooking, cleaning and caring for both children and elderly parents and grandparents, but also the emotional and intellectual labour that reproduces security work as desirable, if not necessary.Gurkha households have for <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/review/The-Khukri-Braves-review,2945" target="_blank" rel="noopener">well over 200 years</a> provided the necessary, yet largely unacknowledged, work of caring for the family and offering an emotional lifeline to Gurkhas when they are working abroad.Taking care of the family back home is a fundamental part of what allows the security industry to function and sustain recruitment, even if the industry does not recognise this. The household enables security work to be desirable in the first place. Just as young boys are raised to believe that being a <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=19744#.WytyHFUza70" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Gurkha</a> is honourable and important, especially if you do not excel at formal education, young girls are raised to believe that being a wife of a Gurkha is a good life — and a good decision to make.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221107111152/6368e3b19c7e80680e033398jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="959"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure><figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221107111152/6368e3b49c7e80680e033399jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1000" height="668"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Young boys turn into young men who, with the encouragement of their families, invest emotionally, financially and physically into the dream of becoming a Gurkha. Young girls turn into young women who make career choices based on the ability to have flexible employment that might take them to the UK or enable them to be ‘good wives’ in Nepal. The social fabric of these communities is centred around <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/regular-columns/GUEST-COLUMN/Nobodies-who-are-somebody,750" target="_blank" rel="noopener">foreign security work</a>. The household is the physical space where youth who desire to be Gurkhas materialise.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221107111152/6368e3b79c7e80680e03339ajpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1000" height="668"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>The household is also where the life sustaining labour that keeps families alive exists, providing recruits with important emotional wellbeing. This labour is largely performed by the wives, mothers and daughters in the Gurkha family. This involves ensuring basic needs are met but also that children learn to know and to love their absent Gurkha fathers.  They learn that the work their father does, despite him not being physically present, is for their future. They ensure that the Gurkha father is included in the everyday of family life through social media, and encourage the children to maintain relations. Without this household labour, Gurkhas could not be away on foreign security employment for 12-24 months at a time and still maintain vital family obligations back home.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221107111152/6368e3b99c7e80680e03339bjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1000" height="668"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>The Gurkha family household is part of a well-established community and all participants appear to know and value each other’s roles. This is no surprise since these families have been set up for foreign military work <a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/editorial/Double-war-centennial-for-Nepal,1011" target="_blank" rel="noopener">for over two centuries</a>. Consequently, the private security industry does not need to ‘sell’ security work to these communities the way it might do to other communities across Asia.  These men and their families are already intellectually, emotionally, socially and physically set up for foreign security work.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221107111152/6368e3bc9c7e80680e03339cjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1000" height="564"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>In interviews with Gurkhas and their families, there is a strong intellectual and emotional reinforcement for the military as honourable and necessary work, but still one of sacrifice. They repeatedly say that it is "for a better future."<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221107111152/6368e3bf9c7e80680e03339djpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1000" height="668"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>To be sure, this future does mean a continuation of Gurkha military service for the next generation. However, many families also look to a future where their children may not have to go into military service, where they might get a good education and start a business and live close to their families.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221107111152/6368e3c19c7e80680e03339ejpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="1001"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Looking at the Gurkhas and their family members not just as revered soldiers and martial communities, but as migrant families, enables us to locate how the broader infrastructure of these households makes exporting Gurkhas for security services possible globally.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221107111152/6368e3c49c7e80680e03339fjpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="1001"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>It also shows us the profound ways in which family is shaping, but also shaped by broader foreign security migration patterns. To understand why Gurkhas continue to be an ‘easy sell’ and desirable in global security we need to look beyond the martial myth of these men. We need to also zoom in on the Gurkha household back in Nepal that enables this pattern of security migration.<figure><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221107111152/6368e3c79c7e80680e0333a0jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="1001"><figcaption> </figcaption></figure>Read also:<a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/page/the-gurkhas-an-interactive-timeline" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Gurkhas: An interactive timeline</a>, Ayesha Shakya<a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/editorial/Nepalis-waited-200-years-for-country-to-be-proud-of,2939" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Looking back to the future</a>, Editorial<a href="http://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/review/The-Khukri-Braves-review,2945" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The sharp edge of history</a>, Kunda Dixit<h1>We are family</h1><img src="https://superdesk-pro-c.s3.amazonaws.com/sd-nepalitimes/20221107111152/6368e3cb9c7e80680e0333a1jpeg.jpg" alt="" width="1500" height="1001">Basanta and I sit with Sonika and her husband Bhim in their living area above the kitchen of their home outside Itahari. It is a quiet two street community, mostly made up of Gurkha families.Children are playing outside. One of the neighbours, a wife of an Indian Gorkha soldier, comes to visit. Bhim shows family photos and his Indian military medals, while Sonika is attentive and ensures visitors are well fed and looked after.Bhim has been working in private security in Afghanistan for just over two years, and he is home on leave. Sonika takes care of their two children and Bhim’s deceased brother’s 2 children while he is away. It is a big responsibility ensuring they go to school and do well. Bhim is there to assist in any major decisions. Bhim keeps his Facebook messenger always on in case Sonika needs to message him with something urgent.Asked why he decided to take up a job as a private security, Bhim answers: “The pay is very good, and I have to send my children to boarding school.”Excerpt from Amanda Chisholm’s fieldnotes.Amanda Chisholm, PhD, is Lecturer in International Politics at Newcastle University. Her research is sponsored by the UK’s <a href="https://blogs.ncl.ac.uk/militarytomarket">Economic and Social Research Council. </a>

A military-migrant economy

Fenerbahçe Beko won the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague finals in Abu Dhabi, held 23-25 May, defeating Monaco 81-70 in the final. Olympiacos, who defeated Panathinaikos 97-93, finished the series in third place. The Most Valuable Player (MVP) of the final match, Nigel Hayes-Davis from Fenerbahçe Beko, received a prize of 1,000,000 Miles&amp;Smiles from Turkish Airlines’ Chief Commercial Officer Ahmet Olmuştur. The carrier has been the title sponsor of the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague, a top tier tournament, since 2010.

Turkish Basketball

While Nepal was hosting the Sagarmatha Sambaad international climate conference in Kathmandu this month, on Mt Everest it was pretty much business as usual.&nbsp; The signs of climate breakdown are all there: a river now runs through Base Camp in summer, the Khumbu Icefall is more unstable, and there are more &nbsp;frequent avalanches. When expeditions arrived in March, the mountains were bare: it had not snowed since September, but then blizzards dumped unseasonal snow in May. And despite climate worries, such is the pull of Himalayan mountaineering that the Everest Industry showed no signs of slowdown. More than 600 international climbers and their Nepali guides had made it to the summit of the world’s highest mountain. At one point there were an estimated 2,000 people in the tent city on the Khumbu Glacier. All the ropes and ladders on the Icefall came down on Thursday, marking the official end of the spring climbing season, and just in time to avoid a monsoon cyclone approaching from the Bay of Bengal. It has been an action-packed season. One factor could be that Everest fees will go up from September: each foreign climber needs to pay a $15,000 royalty, up from the present $11,000. The cost for a Nepali climber on the South Col route will also go up: from Rs75,000 to Rs150,000.&nbsp; The fee to climb Everest in autumn is $7,500 (up from $5,500), but most climbers still prefer spring. Winter permit fee (December-February) is only $3,750 per person and the mountain is now also open for monsoon (June-August) climbs, when the fee is ever lower at $2,750. The revised rule also makes it mandatory for every two climbers on an 8,000m peak to hire one Nepali mountain guide.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025053004050_67f856fe52714e4bdcf21ae7d45c6f18c82117b9d0a5f73ed1efa04c96de1046.jpg" data-media-id="editor_0" data-image-id="2025053004050_67f856fe52714e4bdcf21ae7d45c6f18c82117b9d0a5f73ed1efa04c96de1046" data-rendition-name="original" width="931" height="732" loading="lazy" alt="The Everest Industry graph 1"> </figure>  In addition, climbers also have to pay for porters and guides, equipment, Base Camp costs, Ice Fall and fixed rope team fees, so climbing Everest does not come cheap. But such is the draw of climbing the world’s highest peak that some say the increased fees will not diminish the crowds next year. The government has tried to spread expeditions out to other seasons and other 8,000ers, but with not much success. Earlier this year, Nepal unilaterally increased the number of 8,000m peaks to 14 by adding six more sub-summits to broaden the choice for climbers. Added were: Yalung Kang (8,505m), Yalung Kang West (8,077m) &nbsp;Kangchenjunga Central (8,473m), Kangchenjunga South (8,476m), Lhotse Middle (8,410m) and Lhotse Shar (8,400m).&nbsp; The announcement could go against the accepted topographic criteria that a stand alone peak has to be at least 300m higher than an adjoining prominence, and at more than 3km isolation from it. The UIAA (Union Internationale des Associations d'Alpinisme) still recognises only 14 mountains as eight-thousanders, and only eight of those are in Nepal, or on the border with China. Nepal’s revised mountaineering regulations also increased the insurance coverage of high-altitude workers to protect porters and high altitude guides who usually take more risks on the mountains. Rescue teams and clean-up campaigners to collect trash and remove bodies of dead climbers up to Camp IV of Mt Everest do not need permits.&nbsp; The Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee is now using drones to fly down trash in 20kg sacks. Each climber is also required to bring down at least 6kg of waste and not just their own, but this rule is erratically enforced. With five fatalities on Everest and Lhotse, Spring 2025 had a historically low death toll. Another five climbers died on Annapurna, Kangchenjunga and Makalu.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/2025053004050_38681de22f0fefb6faa12b01755566d09c5064d0ff84e12ccc7b5d68ea9ba38a.jpg" data-media-id="editor_1" data-image-id="2025053004050_38681de22f0fefb6faa12b01755566d09c5064d0ff84e12ccc7b5d68ea9ba38a" data-rendition-name="original" width="665" height="740" loading="lazy" alt="The Everest industry graph 2"> </figure>  Journalist Ben Ayers who ran the Everest Live social media channel from Everest Base Camp with daily updates credited the low death rate to dramatic rescues of climbers from the ‘Death Zone’ by their Nepali guides and longline helievacs — the visuals all uploaded on YouTube.&nbsp; “Ironically, this perception of safety is bringing more and more inexperienced climbers to the mountain, and they need more rescues,” Ayers said in one of his dispatches.&nbsp; American expedition chronicler and summiteer Alan Arnette suspects there is a lot of under-reporting given that the jet stream and storms were lashing Everest even till late in the season. He told us: “I heard a lot about frostbite and rescues that were not made public. It’s become practically impossible to cover the details on Everest. All the teams report nice news, and they don’t talk about bad stuff to avoid hurting businesses.” Although trash on Nepal’s mountains makes headlines, what does not receive as much attention is the climate impact of so many expeditions. The Sagarmatha Sambaad conference sidestepped this issue, which is ironic given that the impact of climate breakdown is most evident on Himalayan peaks and their glaciers.&nbsp; <h2>Need for Speed</h2> The big stories this year have been about speed-running from their home cities to the top of Everest. Ukrainian entrepreneur Andrew Ushakov flew out of JFK on 15 May at 10:15AM Nepal time, and was on the summit 3 days, 23 hours, and 7 minutes later on 19 May at 9:22AM.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250601080640_1c5cc6fc991307861768f07037ed9d30930fb20f35dbb57dc31c9a92a9e1a885.jpg" data-media-id="editor_2" data-image-id="20250601080640_1c5cc6fc991307861768f07037ed9d30930fb20f35dbb57dc31c9a92a9e1a885" data-rendition-name="original" width="1440" height="1800" loading="lazy" alt="The Everest Industry"> <figcaption>Andrew Ushakov at the summt. Photo: ELITE EXPED</figcaption> </figure>  “I could never find the time for the traditional 40-50 days of acclimatisation,” Ushakov explained matter-of-factly. His ‘Everest Sea-to-Summit’ climb was possible because he spent 400 hours in hypoxic sleep tents over the past four years in New York. However, Ushakov did use ropes already fixed, hired four Nepali guides, helicoptered to Base Camp, and used much more oxygen than an average climber. And after the climb, Ushakov was arrested at Kathmandu airport for being in possession of $20,000 of undeclared cash and spent a night in jail and fined $60,000.&nbsp; The other speedsters were Garth Miller, Alastair Cairns, Anthony Stazicker, and Kev Godlington, all former British Army commandos. They left London and summited five days later on 21 May, and flew right back. They also used hypoxic tents to simulate the thin air high on Everest.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250601080644_90c8dd5cc07b4b43f2989b1dc0c0650ab80f10ebb06680c25a6909c519957bd8.jpg" data-media-id="editor_3" data-image-id="20250601080644_90c8dd5cc07b4b43f2989b1dc0c0650ab80f10ebb06680c25a6909c519957bd8" data-rendition-name="original" width="810" height="668" loading="lazy" alt="The Everest Industry "> <figcaption>All four members of the Furtenbach team at the summit. Photo: Sandro Gromen-Hayes</figcaption> </figure>  But more controversial was their use of xenon gas therapy in a German hospital to ramp up the production of oxygen-carrying haemoglobins in their blood. Xenon is banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency for being performance enhancing in sports. Expedition leader Lukas Furtenbach said this rule does not apply to mountaineering, as it is not a regulated sport like swimming. Nepal has no rules about xenon, but the Department of Tourism said it was launching an ‘investigation’ to decide on future policy since it is difficult to ban xenon, but allow oxygen. The controversy has also divided the mountaineering community, with some climbers saying they just want to maximise their chances of survival. Spending less time on the mountain could make climbing safer by reducing avalanche risk. It would also mean less trash on the mountains, but it would reduce the income of Nepal’s expedition industry. It is also unclear how much of the success was due to xenon therapy and whether the ex-special forces were already in good physical shape.&nbsp; The need for speed hides the fact that climbing in the Himalaya is dangerous business, and climbers cannot sprint to the top just by huffing xenon. But ultra-fast climbs could be charged more, and the revenue generated can be used to establish state-of-the-art rescue operations, and increase pay and insurance for guides. Two other speed chasers this season were Swiss-Ecuadorian Karl Egloff and American Tyler Andrews, both on Everest without oxygen. Andrews choppered to Base Camp to catch a weather window, but turned back from 8,500m due to high winds. Heavy snow and wind also forced Egloff to descend from 7,000m. Slow and steady climbers like Anja Blacha from Germany did make it to the summit without oxygen, while Kami Rita Sherpa broke his own record with his 31st Everest summit as he led a 26-strong Indian Army group. There were 468 permits issued for foreign climbers from 48 expeditions to Everest this spring. Nepal’s other eight-thousanders together had only 17 expeditions. Nepal has more than 1,000 peaks above 6,000m, and has opened only 476 of them for climbing.&nbsp;

The Everest Industry

While Nepal marked <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/mt-everest-pvt-ltd">Mt Everest</a> Day on 29 May, on the other side of the planet in the US state of Colorado dozens of Nepalis who have climbed the world’s highest peak multiple times were busy working as chefs and Uber drivers. Among them is Nima Doma Sherpa, who climbed Mt Everest in 2019 after her husband Tshering Wangchu was among 16 crushed by an avalanche on <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/banner/on-thin-ice-in-the-khumbu">the Khumbu Icefall</a> five years earlier. A large serac broke off the West Shoulder of <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/the-everest-industry">Mt Everest </a>and fell directly on a group of <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/opinion/more-porters-sick-on-everest-trail">porters and guides</a> making their way up the Icefall at 5,800m. Their bodies were flown by helicopter to Khumjung where Tshering Wangchu was born. He was excited about climbing Mt Everest for the first time.&nbsp; In Khumjung, Nima Doma felt like her own life had also ended. This was the kind of news Sherpa wives, mothers and sisters dreaded every <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/peak-climbing-season-2025-s4abrxny">mountaineering season</a>. She stayed home for more than two years grieving, but ultimately gathered up all her emotional strength to take care of her 6-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter. Nima had grown up in Khumjung hearing <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/review/stories-of-nepal-s-summiteers">tales of adventure on the mountains </a>from their father, Ang Chubi Sherpa who had climbed Everest in 1993. He used to bring her and her sisters and brother European chocolates after every expedition, and used to tell them that the chocolate bars grew on the mountains. “It was only after we got older did we realise that he told us that chocolates grew in the mountains so we would not worry about him putting himself in harm's way,” Nima Doma recalled with a faraway look at her home in Boulder this week. Nima went to the school that <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/Nepali-Times-Buzz/commemorating-edmund-hillary-in-nepal,4145">Edmund Hillary</a> opened in Khumjung till Grade 8, and then dropped out to help in the kitchen and <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/when-yaks-go-so-does-culture">tend yaks</a>. She was married off to Tshering Wangchu, who was also a high altitude guide. When Tshering went on expeditions, Nima also started working as a porter from Namche to Base Camp. It was perhaps her father’s tales of mountains of chocolates that had always attracted her to <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/knowing-our-mountains-43v4iyvo">the peaks</a>. After her husband was killed ten years ago this month, being a widow with children was not easy for Nima Doma. But she was not alone: there were at least 200 single mothers in <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/khumbu-since-1950-jaww4qn0">the Khumbu</a>, and 20 of them just in Khumjung whose husbands had been killed in <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/nation/tragic-start-to-himalayan-spring-nepal,3695">mountaineering accidents</a>. Some were not even 20 years old, and had children growing up without fathers. But there were also women in the 50s whose husbands had been killed in the 1980s. Nima found sponsors for her children’s education, and moved to Kathmandu. In the capital, Sherpa widows used to meet to help each other. Some of them had joined the Nepal Mountaineering Association (NMA) training for rock and ice climbing. “I decided that it was no use sitting home and crying anymore, after meeting other single mothers I felt less alone,” remembers Nima, who joined the Juniper Foundation and enrolled in an NMA training camp in Manang. There she climbed Chulu East (6,584m) and met Furadiki Sherpa, whose rope-fixing husband had also been <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/news/on-mt-everest-s-70th-records-and-fatalities">killed on Everest</a> in 2013. They set themselves the goal of climbing Everest one day, and started a fund-raising drive.  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250530090544_621be0724b9182c8e3594b2c562a71ec32ac01d985a71d0cf31646de9d51e15a.png" data-media-id="editor_12" data-image-id="20250530090544_621be0724b9182c8e3594b2c562a71ec32ac01d985a71d0cf31646de9d51e15a" data-rendition-name="original" width="2678" height="1274" loading="lazy" alt="Everest summiteers find new life in the US"> </figure>  “We decided we had to overcome society’s stigma of <a href="https://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/nation/widows-personal-happiness-comes-last-in-face-of-social-financial-hardships,1855">widowhood</a> and prove that <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/remembering-junko-tabei">women could also climb mountains</a>,” Nima said, adding that she was inspired by Nepal’s first woman Everest summiteer Pasang Lhamu Sherpa, who died during her descent in 1993. Nima Doma and Furdiki climbed the technically-difficult Ama Dablam (6,812m) and then arrived at Everest Base Camp in April 2019 as part of their Two Widows Expedition with the motto, ‘So Can We’. While climbing up the Icefall Nima passed the spot where her husband had been killed. It was a jumble of constantly-shifting ice blocks bigger than houses. She closed her eyes and said a prayer. “I remember thinking, this is so difficult and dangerous. This is what my husband had to do to support our family,” Nima Doma said. “I was determined to fulfil my husband’s dream of climbing Chomolungma, and to prove to ourselves that we two women could do it.” It was 23 May 2019 when <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/world/two-sherpa-widows-scale-everest-and-smash-stigma-idUSKCN1SU0MV/" target="_blank">Nima and Furdiki stepped on the summit</a> and looked over into Tibet, and down at Tengboche Monastery to the south.&nbsp;  <figure> <img src="https://publisher-publish.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pb-nepalitimes/swp/asv65r/media/20250530090544_6b822582b5d88ba5e972db084f184690b40653c6efd9901b2dd082ffba2a263b.png" data-media-id="editor_16" data-image-id="20250530090544_6b822582b5d88ba5e972db084f184690b40653c6efd9901b2dd082ffba2a263b" data-rendition-name="original" width="2700" height="1522" loading="lazy" alt="Everest summiteers find new life in the US"> </figure>  Nima Doma hugged Furdiki, took off her mask and wept. But for the first time in five years, it was not from grief but relief — relief for being free of all the sadness and sacrifices and for fulfilling her husband’s dream. They had found <a href="https://nepalitimes.com/here-now/life-after-death">life after death</a>. “I felt this immense joy to be on top of the world, it was indescribable,” Nima Doma said, “I have wept only twice in my life. Once when my husband died, and once there on top of Everest.” The tears had frozen on Nima Doma’s cheeks, as she and Furdiki headed back down the mountain.

Everest summiteers find new life in the US

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